Preventing cyberattacks is a top-of-mind concern for many organizations as they move more and more online and into the cloud. But this heightened fear of online threats has also given rise to data security myths that can cause people to take the wrong approach to protecting their organization.

Recently, the Working Smarter Podcast sat down with Calabrio’s security experts, Tim Wittenburg and Craig Zweber to sift through the confusion and provide insightful advice. Read on to learn more about debunking these data security myths and find practical solutions to ensure data security and compliance.

What Is Data Security?

Data security defines a number of methods and best practices to protect your valuable data from harm. Putting in place data protection strategies can make theft or tampering of a cloud environment and connected devices more difficult. These protections can also reduce the potentially harmful impact of tampering or theft.

Protective measures such as data encryption protect the data itself by making it useless to anyone who does not have the decryption key(s). For data encryption to be effective, the decryption keys also need to be stored and managed securely.  

  Good data security includes protecting the data itself and goes farther by protecting all of the environments in which the data itself is stored, transmitted, or processed, from the moment it’s created, and throughout its entire lifecycle. As an example, valuable data is more secure when care is taken to identify who should have access to the sensitive data based on job responsibilities. Once the job roles are identified, permissions are set so that data access is permitted only for authorized users. 

Why Is It Important? 

In the digital space, there is a commonly shared fear of critical assets and intellectual property being stolen, since hackers are constantly trying to gain unauthorized access to mobile devices, computers, and cloud systems. They may threaten data erasure or leak personal health information and other sensitive data for a price. While this can be devastating for individuals, it can potentially cripple a corporate network and negatively impact business operations. 

 While there is no 100 percent solution for protecting data from being breached, there are some practical data protection solutions that can help. Focusing on security best practices, good diligence, and leveraging your partners and software services to add security updates and fixes as soon as they are discovered are some great ways to help strengthen a data protection strategy. 

 Enterprises and other large-scale businesses need to prioritize data protection security throughout the organization. While adding simple solutions like strong passwords or multi-step verifications can help, there needs to be more direct action to prevent data breaches. The three biggest risks of cyber threats to personal and professional devices include: 

• Phishing emails 
• Social engineering attacks
• Hacking weak, reused passwords 

By keeping your security systems up-to-date, you can stay ahead of security trends and tracking to protect data from being stolen from professional or personal computers. 

Safeguard Your Devices with Enhanced Security 

While contact centers and other major businesses have extensive security protocols in place, there is always a risk level whenever humans are involved. Therefore, the best defense against cyber-attacks is by advising employees to use common sense on both their personal and professional devices.   

 Here are Calabrio’s security expert’s recommendations to prevent data breaches by using the practical data security solutions below:  

 Increase Password Strength 

Having a strong, unique password is the first line of defense for many users against hackers. See some simple ways to prevent unauthorized users from deciphering your passwords: 

• Don’t use simple passwords 
• Mix it up with symbols and numbers
• Make it longer (10+ characters) 
• Don’t use the same personal passwords for business accounts 
• Don’t use common catchphrases 
• Change your password several times a year 
• Don’t use personally identifiable information 

Use Multi-Factor Authentication 

Securing data on an individual level doesn’t need exceptional knowledge or expert-level understanding. In fact, simply improving passwords or adding two-factor authentication requirements can help significantly reduce the likelihood of hackers gaining access to private information. 

 While it may seem like a hassle to have to answer a multi-factor authentication question every time you log onto a site, this small step is yet another layer of protection to prevent the loss of sensitive information. 

 Leverage Strong Services 

There has been a surge in cloud services available over the last 10 years and deciding which one is worth your time can feel like a daunting task. Businesses need to know the difference between fake and true cloud solutions because their data security and compliance could be at risk. 

 Software companies that leverage their partnerships with Microsoft or AWS can benefit from the security protection and data loss prevention that comes within those true cloud solutions. Since these big data platforms are billion-dollar companies, they have the financial resources, data warehouses, and physical security to protect data assets from a data breach. 

 Apply a Pen Test 

Many large-scale companies try to stay ahead of software concerns by running what is commonly referred to as the pen test. Calabrio’s security team uses this method to hire hackers, give them control access to our system through a login, and then try to find weak areas to exploit. 

 This preventative test helps our team identify problems before outside hackers can. By continuously applying these programs, we can offer our customers superior built-in data security. 

 Keep Software Up-to-Date 

Everything your trusted security system offers an update, take advantage of it. These updates are security-based and very rarely will make changes to the actual user interface. An up-to-date system has patched any vulnerabilities detected and will help protect encrypted data. 

 Pause and Reflect 

A common misconception is to be secure you need to be a wizard at all things tech to have sufficient data protection. That’s really not the case. According to Tim Wittenburg, it’s more about “applying common sense” to suspicious phishing emails. 

 Users should really take the extra time to pause and think before clicking links or following up on them. It’s also essential to report anything suspicious to security directors and call support lines.